The Fire Desire Poi & Staff Community was started by a group of South African spinners that are passionate about fire dancing, object manipulation / flow arts.

We started the community (January 2009) for the South African Community 

Some of the initial reasons we started the Fire Desire Community was:

 - There was no South African based Community

 - To Share our Passion and Love for the Flow Arts

 - To Inspire others to play and share our amazing arts

As time passed and website development continued, we started drawing international traffic with some amazing feedback. This made us rethink what it is we really want to achieve with the Website.

One year into the development of the website and countless hours browsing the internet we started realized just how much information is really available online. The scary part is that we are still finding more and more almost daily.

Now being based in South Africa it is hard for many of us to travel overseas to attend the major conventions, retreats, ect. This kind of travelling is just to expensive for the average South African to afford. Almost everything we learnt was thanks to the Passion and Love from artists around the world willing to share their knowledge Online.

This made us realize that there must be many more who depend on the internet to learn and be inspired. We then decided our main goal is to create the most comprehensive collection information in one easy to use website. A website that will truly link/unite the global poi community and their knowledge.  

If it was not for artists around the world sharing what they know we would never have learnt what we have. For this reason we encourage everyone to share and help further our amazing art. The Fire Desire Community evolves and grows through the each and every person that is willing to get involved. We consider everyones ideas and thoughts and so the Website is forever evolving and growing.

We welcome anyone who is willing to help us develop the Fire Desire Community and ultimately grow the art. No matter how big or small your contribution might be.

It could be as simple as letting us know about a cool website or article, Teaching a friend, Hosting a gathering in our local area, Adding your Pictures to the gallery, Posting in the Forums, Uploading events not in the Event list, Commenting or Rating posts/pictures&videos. Inviting friends to join the community, Giving us feedback on the website and what you would like to see. There are a million different ways to get involved what are you waiting for?

For those wanting to do and join the Development team: we need all the help we can get creating the tutorial sections(this is a big job that will require the help of the global community), If you are into blogging why not start your own blog post in our Blog Section, Write Articles or give us rights to post an old article of yours, Create new tutorial videos, help us improve the layout of the website, ect ect ect. There are no limit to what we can achieve if we stand united and work together. 

We even invite other Communities and Websites to get involved, You are welcome to create an entirely new section with all your branding and information with links back to your current website, basically integrating what you have already done into the community but still keeping your unique touch. 

Now we know there are many well established communities out there and we Respect & Support them all. They have done amazing things for the arts and we are forever grateful. We however feel all these websites are nowhere close to achieving the true potential of what a community site can really be. Even Fire Desire has a long way to go. The to do list grows on a daily basis. The difference is we are letting the global community get involved in a unique way.

Divided we are weak, United we have No Limits. YES WE CAN!

If you wish to get involved please send us an Email at:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or leave a comment at the bottom of the page

The Current Community Development Team consist of the Following people: 

(More information on the below individuals coming soon)

• Bruno Kopf (Main driving force behind the community development)
• Cean Herzfield (Initial Website Designer)
• David Fanner (Photographer & Basic Development)
• Christo (Forum Admin)
• Blaze Fire Dancing School (Content Admins & Basic Development)
•  

Current Community Website Projects we are working on:

Tutorial Section:

We have finally started working on the tutorial section. The goal is to create the ultimate collection of learning material freely available online. We have decided to tackle this by completing one Poi Family at a time. The first family we have decided to do is Flowers.

Single Staff Beginner Series:

I (Bruno Kopf) am tired of seeing so little available online for single staff manipulation. There are many Double Staff and Contact staff tutorials available online and even more Poi related stuff but almost nothing for staff. (I could be wrong maybe I haven't found them yet) Inspired by Nick Woolsey's PlayPoi Beginner Series I have decided to create a similar series for single staff basics. 

Bruno's Journey Into Poi

Since getting involved in the Poi community I (Bruno) never once tried to learn Poi. Initially I only wanted to concentrate on staff. My refusal to learn Poi over the past few years has now provided us with the unique opportunity to; fully document my progress through Poi. With the intention of creating a study aid that will help others learning Poi

Blog Section:

We are working and linking all Flow Art(Poi,Staff ect) related Blogs. We have recently started two of our own Blogs: The Fire Desire Blog & Bruno's Journey into Poi

Photography:

With the addition of David and Deirdre to the team we now have some professional photographers keen to start contributing. We will be doing many photo shoots over the next couple months. The goal is to create various photographic series capturing flow, tech and the beauty of flow arts. These will then be posted across the internet to help promote and grow the awareness of our arts. 

Upgrading the Website's Community Engine:

The upgrades will make the Fire Desire Community be more like Facebook in terms of functionality. There will be a feed on the Home Page that will feed members activities,posts,videos,pictures and more just like Facebook! You will be able to Read/Comment/Like and Share just like on Facebook. Whats more is you will be able to link your Fire Desire Account to almost any Social networking site. Improved profiles and much much more! 

Hall of Fame (New Idea More info Coming Soon)

Much more to come as new suggestions and Ideas come in. Otherwise we are always thinking of ways to improve the website.